Virginia Postrel, Columnist

The Politics of 'Roseanne' Are Recognition and Empathy

Its radical premise: Recognizing diverse viewpoints can in fact showcase the things we share.

March 29, 2018 at 10:17 PM UTC

Virginia Postrel is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. She is a visiting fellow at the Smith Institute for Political Economy and Philosophy at Chapman University and author, most recently, of “The Fabric of Civilization: How Textiles Made the World.”

Big reversal.
Photographer: Robert Trachtenberg/ABC via Getty Images

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Before Wednesday evening, I’d never seen a single episode of “Roseanne.” But in the interest of cultural commentary, I cranked up my ABC.com app to see what all the fuss -- and the extraordinarily high ratings -- was about. Here’s what I learned.

1) It’s knowing. From the moment Dan Conner (John Goodman) wakes with a start, we’re in a familiar world rarely seen on TV. His face is covered by a plastic mask with a breathing tube. The show assumes the audience recognizes what it is: a CPAP (continuous positive airway pressure) machine to treat sleep apnea. Back when the original “Roseanne” was on the air, from 1988 to 1997, I’d never heard of sleep apnea, which afflicts an estimated one in 15 Americans, particularly overweight men over 40 like Dan. Twenty years later, I have friends and relatives who sleep in similar get-ups. It’s a common phenomenon in American life. But you wouldn’t know that from watching TV.